Posts Tagged 24-hour play project

OVERNIGHT SENSATIONS, the annual 24-hour play project sponsored by Mill Mountain Theatre and the Hollins University Playwrights’ Lab, isn’t a competition but my entry this year got a nice review from local journalist Dan Smith:

“There were many notable moments and accomplishments, not the least of which was Dwayne Yancey’s fall-down funny “The Denmark County Barbershop Quartet Presents …,” wherein an oddball quartet gets by singing about disasters. This is, I think, the first musical I’ve seen in the 11 Overnight Sensations and the crew (Reilly Lincavicks, Michael Mansfield, Erica Musyt, J.P. Powell, Chris Shepard and Ally Thomas) carried if off beautifully. I thought it was the best of all the plays last night.”

For the fifth time in ten years, I was one of the writers to take part in OVERNIGHT SENSATIONS, the 24-hour play project put on by Mill Mountain Theatre and Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Everyone gathers on Friday night. The playwrights draw out of a hat the name of their director — I drew Maura Campbell. She drew the cast. Then I drew the genre (crime drama), the setting (the zoo) and the theme (“from the jaws of hell, I stab at thee”). Then the writers are whisked off to the Hollins library to write. By 8 a.m. Saturday, we’re expected to have a 10-minute script. The morning is spent going over revisions with the director, a production meeting — then the cast shows up for rehearsal at noon. At 8 p.m., the curtain goes up.

For the third time in about five years, I was invited to be one of the playwrights in the 24-hour play challenge at Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke, Va. (The “Overnight Sensations” program is coordinated through the MFA playwriting program at Hollins University, and draws from many of its students.)

On a Friday evening in July, all the participants gathered for a reception in the lobby and, after some ceremonies, the drawing begins. First, each of the writers draws a director from a hat. I drew Rebecca Osborne of Texas, one of the Hollins students. She drew a pre-selected cast. Then we drew a genre (I got “horror”), a location (I got “cemetery”) and a theme (I’m momentarily forgetting what mine was; I think it was “slow but steady wins the race” but maybe that was another year.”)

At that point, the writers withdrew to the library at Hollins to begin writing; by the next morning, we had to have a 10-minute script turned in. The cast showed up at noon, rehearsed all afternoon, and on Saturday night, six new shows were produced on the main stage at Mill Mountain Theatre.

With horror and a cemetery, everyone was expecting me to produce something about vampires or zombies or such. Instead, I surprised them with dark piece about baseball and steroids — in the 19th century.

The basic plot of “Strong As A Bull”: A mining company fields a baseball team (they really did that back then.) But when one player’s performance declines, the boss threatens to send him back to the mines. Rather than face a fate underground, the player tries a magic elixir from a travelling medicine man — which makes him strong as a bull. In fact, it starts to turn him into an actual bull.

Chad Runyon as a werewolf and Gina Laguzza as a vampire in "A Vampire Soap Opera"

In a previous post, I described the writing process for the 24-hour play project at Mill Mountain Theatre in July 2010. Here are photos from my show, “A Vampire Soap Opera: The Old and the Restless.”

A soap opera about vampires, complete with laundry detergent commercials. A teen-age vampire runs away to Las Vegas; her governess finds her – but so does a vampire hunter. What will happen next? Tune in next time!

Dwayne Yancey is a playwright from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He’s had scripts produced throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain and other locations abroad. For more on his work, contact him directly at dwayneyancey@gmail.com.